Movin'

Dearest Lilah,

This week you've gotten a lot more mobile - in more ways than one!

First of all, you are pulling yourself around now like a little army man on a secret mission. It's funny, because few things seem to warrant troubling yourself to get to them like a good magazine, piece of newspaper, or catalog. You will stop any and all play time if you spot the glossy pages of a catalog in your midst and immediately start your rocky descent from seated position to zombie dragging ready. You usually bonk your face. You haven't quite learned how to gracefully get from "seated" to "belly," and normally just lean forward farther and farther until -bonk!- you are on your belly. But once in this position, there is no reading material that is safe from your juicy jaws.

You also like to go after anything you shouldn't have: Mommy's nail polish bottles, the carpet (which, for some reason, pulls out so badly that we've decided against ever buying a shag carpet again) and bits of fluff. Your daddy has always wanted a clear coffee table, and as soon as you're crawling for serious, I can see that for a period of a few years, we will not be able to leave magazines, books, and papers out lest they become Lilah food.

You also have this funny way of scooting on your bottom, more like bouncing, really, to get from place to place. It takes forever and is terribly inefficient, but you seem pleased by the results. This technique is used more when you think I should nurse you. Sitting up, your face is pretty much even with your breakfast, lunch, and dinner when I'm next to you on the floor, so when I am playing with you for any length of time, you eventually look at my chest so long you make yourself hungry (I imagine for me it would be like playing with someone who had a cake strapped to their midsection) and start bouncing Tigger-style over to me, hands out to grab at my shirt and "tell" me what you're after.

Another way you're mobile is that you've learned to pull up to a stand from a seated position if I hold my hands out for you to hang on to. I'm thinking that we will probably go ahead and put your crib mattress down a level tomorrow, because I am having trouble sleeping at night for fear you are going to figure out you can pull up on the edge one morning when you get tired of waiting for me to come get you and you'll just propel yourself out onto the wood floor on your head. And this would be a much higher fall onto a less rugged area than when I let you fling yourself headfirst off the sofa. :-/

Finally, you are now legal to move among the neighboring countries of The United States. We went on Thursday to apply for your passport card! This is particularly exciting to me, who did not even go on real family vacations when I was a kid. The only family vacation we ever took where we did not stay with friends of Gramma and Grandpa was to Stone Mountain in Georgia, and that was only 2.5 hours from our house. That is not really a vacation. I'm not even sure why we had to spend the night. Anyway, I thought about getting you a for real passport, but they are quite expensive, costing nearly $90 and they only last for five years. I figured that you're not going to be visiting overseas before you're five, and possibly not before you're ten, but because your daddy works so often near the Canadian border and because Aunt Janice lives right across the river from Canada, we might actually want to go there. So we opted to get the $35 passport card instead of the $85 passport for now.

Here is your little application and your cute little passport card photos:

You did SO well for the picture! They don't want you to show teeth for your passport photos anymore, so we were lucky that you never smile for a photo until after the flash goes off (fashionably late, you are!) The manager at Walgreen's said you did better than any other kid he's ever taken a passport photo for. I was oddly proud. :-)

So that's it, baby girl! You are on your way, now! Soon you'll be crawling around eating all of my scrap paper and the kitty fur tumbleweeds, and one day in the not too distant future you'll probably go "international" for the first time!

So study up on those maps and globes in your room, baby. We've got a lot of trips to plan.

Love,
Mommy

Solid

Dearest Lilah -

Today, at age 7 months and 4 days, we gave you your first taste of solid food.

We gave you Avacado.


You weren't really sure what to do with it once it was in your mouth, and you made some funny faces we didn't quite catch.


But you were definitely excited and wanted more!

I am not going to lie and say this isn't one of those sad Mommy moments for me. You're not my tiny baby anymore. You'll soon be picking up little toddler sized bits of food and eating them by yourself. In fact, you tried to help yourself to the bowl today.

I'm also selfishly going to miss breastmilk only poopie diapers. They do not smell like full-grown man poop, and I am not looking forward to those. At all. And not having to carry food around? Yeah, I enjoyed leaving your diaper bag at home 90% of the time.

But I am glad you are growing up and growing well. And this is just a part of that.

I hope you enjoyed your first bite of for really real food. It's just the tip of the iceberg. I've got all kinds of things to make and share with you!

Love,
Mommy

Thank goodness I remembered.

Dearest Lilah -

Mommy has a little problem with her memory. She means well; she lies in bed at night, composing great letters for this blog to help her remember all the cool things you are doing. She wants you to be able to know when things happened, and not have to live with "Hm...I don't really remember." No, instead she'd like to say, "Go read your blog. It has everything." This is because we assume you'll be curious about everything like me. It's a fair assumption; You should see how you sit and stare at people. People who are talking to you. People who are not talking to you. People who you think might need to talk to you. Nosey. That's what you are. But curiosity must just start out looking that way when you're a baby.

Anyway.

When you ask me when was the first time you got stung, I want to be able to say it was August 1, 2009. We had gone to the Saturday market and were enjoying our time there for the first time in weeks. I had just declared defeat with the crazy coupon project I was working and we went out for breakfast and to buy some veggies and meat from our favorite farmers, Amy and Chad. You were with your daddy while he talked to Chad and all of a sudden you started to scream and cry. Chad said maybe it was because his beard was a little longer than it should be, and we kind of laughed but I was worried. You are not the type of baby to burst into screaming tears like that. And you were inconsolable. I was sad. I couldn't help but feel like that was a hurt cry...the same kind of cry you cry when you get a shot. We got you out of the carrier and I just held you myself for a little while. Sometimes mommies do that; it's not that we can really DO anything to fix the unknown problem, but we feel better just laying hands on you and feeling you to make sure you're alright ourselves. You quickly settled back down as we headed back to the car. During the walk is when we noticed the big, red welt on the base of your thumb. You had been viciously attacked by some sort of insect. The next day it was a little blister and seemed to me like an ant bite, but I can't for the world of me figure out how an ant got on your thumb when you were being carried by your daddy. I guess we'll never know exactly what manner of evil insect got you, but now we have to be extra certain to keep an eye on you if you're bitten again, just to make sure you don't have an allergic reaction. It's mostly gone down now, and you never even acted like it hurt you after the initial bite. Never tried to scratch it or acted like it itched. That makes me wonder if babies don't notice things like that, or since you all don't have a frame of reference if you just don't know that you can do anything about it so you just suffer through it. Sad, really.

You had a good first on the first, too, though. Your cousin Seph had his fifth birthday party out at an equestrian center not far from our house, so you got to ride a horse for the first time!


I wish I could have caught a picture of your face the first time you saw that horse. It was as if you thought, "THAT IS THE BIGGEST DOG I HAVE EVER SEEN!" The pony let you ride him a few steps while daddy held you. You pet his neck. You were completely entranced. It was precious. We were going to go on the hayride to the petting zoo, but it was getting near dinner time for you and so we left after your horse encounter.

In a move that might just win me "mother of the year 2009," you experienced another bad first on Monday, August 3. We have always sort of propped you in the corner of the sofa and been able to run a plate to the kitchen or put laundry from the washer to the dryer. That's what I was trying to do when I left you on the sofa that day. I had put the little half circle pillow on the outside of you so that if you fell over for some reason, you wouldn't fall off the sofa. But I couldn't shake the image of you falling off. You were just too big now. You just seemed too nosey. And then there was the dog and there was the cat and they were walking around...but off I went to the laundry room to throw some clothes from the washer to the dryer.

That's when I heard it.

*THUD*

You hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. Head first, of course, because it weighs the most of anything on your tiny body. And - of course - you hit your face on the power supply to my laptop.

You were crying so hard when I picked you up and I felt terrible. I just pet your head and told you I was sorry for being an awful, neglectful mom. That I would never leave you unattended while elevated again. I pulled you off my shoulder to check you out and make sure you were ok and your mouth was all bloody. You had hit your nose and lip, and the inside of your mouth, where your lip and gum joins, was bleeding.

I wanted to die.

I made my baby bleed.

I was pretty surprised I didn't end up crying myself. I certainly felt like I should. But I didn't, and I think I didn't because when I walked away and left you pushed securely in the corner of the sofa, I KNEW you were going to fall. So mentally, I was prepared.

But that doesn't make it better.

You bled off and on the rest of the afternoon. You even woke up with a bloody sheet when you took your nap, and when you turned your face, it would hurt the tender and bruised puffy lip you sported and it would make you cry all over again.

I gave you a little Tylenol to help with the pain and let you suck on some ice to help with the pain and the swelling.

You have since fully recovered.

Your grandfather was funny; he kept telling me not to let you go to sleep because you might have a concussion. I got mad at him for saying that, but I could only be indignant because I had already asked your daddy if I should worry about you possibly having a concussion. He said if you didn't throw up you were fine.

The last first to report happened yesterday.

Another good one. Well, good to me, anyway.

At least they seem to balance out, right?

I took you to Furman to see Miss Kay, Miss Helen and Miss Karen because it was Miss Karen's birthday. We had picked her out some pretty stripey purple carnations and I had wrapped them up in pretty paper. You can't show up at a party without a gift, you know. After the party wound down, you and I stayed to chat with Miss Kay and Miss Helen. You were showing off, making your funny squishy face and starting to babble. That's when it happened.

You said "Mmmmmmmmmmmama."

My jaw hit the floor.

Miss Kay and Miss Helen started clapping and cheering for you.

I just said, "Well, you've never said that before!"

It was nice to finally get some recognition after the two months I've been listening to you say "Dadadadadadadadaddydadadadaddydadadadadaddy."

I'm still not sure you associate the sounds you make with either of us, but when we got up this morning and started to walk upstairs you said, "Dada." and I said "He's upstairs" and you said, "Mama" and I said, "I'm right here."

It was so cute.

YOU are so cute.

Many people told us that tonight as we walked around town for First Friday. One woman said that you looked like a porcelain doll and were just beautiful.

As you can imagine, this is not a horrible thing to hear. In fact, I am always open to hearing how beautiful my child is.

And so now my task is to make sure you grow up to behave as pretty as you look.

Love,
Mommy